Well, OK, not “anything.”

For instance, there’s no way this Acer netbook’s 160-gig hard drive prepares you for a meteorite crushing your house. And its Intel Atom Processor doesn’t equip you at all to cope with a crisis of sexual identity.

And the three-cell lithium ion battery in this porta-puter is good for up to two hours on a charge (depending on usage), so that might prepare you for the bus ride to work, but not to ship up Nunavut way in an attempt to become the Farley Mowat of the blogosphere.

So OK, fine, “ready for anything” isn’t what we mean. Owning this Acer netbook and accessories won’t necessarily make you ready to run the Marathon des Sables, or ready to take the bar exam, or ready to be in a serious relationship. It’s sort of just an expression, “ready for anything” is, but if our years in the gadget biz have taught us one thing, it’s that computer people can be annoyingly literal. It’s one of those left-brained traits, apparently.

What we’re actually trying to get at when we say this netbook and its bundled accessories get you “ready for anything” is that it’s a lightweight, portable computer with a built-in webcam, so you can email, chat, “tweet,” “buzz” and update your Facebook status from your cubicle, the sofa, poolside, or even the men’s room, if that’s your thing. And if you’re a man.

It’s bundled with a portable optical mouse (to spare you the annoyance of using a tiny touchpad for extended periods), ear buds with a built-in microphone (to spare the rest of us your horrible taste in music), and a five-port USB 2.0 hub so you can upload photos or data on the go.

In other words, with this Acer netbook, mouse, ear buds and USB hub, you’ll be marginally readier than you already are for a fairly narrow category of specifically defined activities. Which doesn’t convey nearly as much excitement as “ready for anything,” but there we are.

Hey, what if we put it like this? “With this Acer netbook bundle, you’ll be ready to keep in touch with friends and up-to-date with colleagues anywhere you go!” Better?

Well, alright, not ANYWHERE you go. Not if you go inside an undersea volcano, for example. Or camping where there’s no power for charging the battery. Or on a commercial airline flight. Or…

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